Mario Creatura: Reform’s conservatism is a myth, and its promises made to be broken

Mario Creatura is a councillor in Croydon and was the Conservative candidate for Croydon Central in 2019.

Reform UK likes to present itself as the true guardian of right-of-centre politics: the party that believes in fiscal discipline, smaller government, and lower taxes. But scratch beneath the slogans and a very different picture emerges – one of economic confusion, populism, and ideological incoherence that no genuine Conservative could support.

The most telling evidence comes from the ground, where theory meets practice… and Reform-run councils are already admitting they lack the fiscal flexibility to keep their own campaign promises.

In Kent, council leader Linden Kemkaran said her county council was a test bed for the party’s national policies and the “shop window through which everybody is going to see what a Reform government might look like.”

Well, despite having campaigned on a platform of lower taxation, her local authority is now preparing to raise council tax by five per cent. As their cabinet member for adult social care, Diane Morton, told the Financial Times: “Services are already down to the bare bones,” and so the council “would raise council tax by five per cent – the maximum permitted.” She followed this up with a candid remark: “We just want more money.” Well, wouldn’t we all.

Seven other Reform-run local authorities are reportedly joining Kent: Durham, Warwickshire, West Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Worcestershire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Lancashire, and Lincolnshire are all planning to raise taxes.

I know from experience that running a council is hard, but for anyone who has spent years arguing that councils must seek to live within their means and protect ratepayers, this reversal exposes the emptiness of Reform’s rhetoric – making promises that they swiftly shelve when the going gets tough.

Beyond local government, their national platform is just as contradictory. Their plan to scrap the two-child benefit cap throws personal responsibility out of the window. A policy designed to promote fairness and fiscal realism is being abandoned in favour of open-ended welfare spending.

That is not reform – it is a retreat into precisely the kind of dependency politics Conservatives have spent years trying to move beyond. Anyone who has supported the party of merit and aspiration cannot credibly now back policies that punish those who sacrifice to do the right thing.

Reform’s approach to infrastructure is equally self-defeating. The party said in February that it would legislate to force the National Grid and SSE to tear down recently built pylons and bury the cables underground. Sam Dumitriu, Head of Policy at Britain Remade, estimates it would cost “between £10.2 billion and £24.1 billion”, enforced by banning dividend payments to shareholders until the work is complete.

This would be an extraordinary assault on investor confidence – a signal to the markets that Reform is perfectly willing to tear up commercial agreements and punish investors for believing in Britain. It is ideological vandalism masquerading as patriotism.

Their hostility to farmers is another example. Reform has proposed to block inheritance tax relief for landowners who install solar panels on their property, a policy that would penalise our already beleaguered farmers simply for trying to diversify to make ends meet. It is an attack on enterprise disguised as traditionalism, cutting across their own rhetoric about supporting rural communities.

And then there is the matter of the sums. Their last manifesto, Our Contract with You, contained a £100 billion black hole – a fantasy budget of uncosted promises that the Economist described as a ‘disaster’ and which economists told the Telegraph “would trigger an immediate and violent sterling crisis.” It would blow a hole in the public finances and devastate the very voters Reform claims to champion. As the Times’ Patrick Maguire reported this week, Farage is now preparing to abandon his programme of tax cuts. In other words, the contract’s small print now reads: we can break our pledges whenever we feel like it.

When ITV’s Robert Peston put John McDonnell and Richard Tice through an excruciating round of “Who said it – Corbyn or Farage?” in June, the results spoke for themselves. The overlap between mad Corbynite rhetoric and Reform’s populism was indistinguishable – the clip is worth a watch for anyone tempted to believe Reform represents fiscal common sense.

If you believe in lower taxes, smaller government and fiscal responsibility, there is only one show in town – the Conservative Party. The way to rebuild credibility is not to indulge populist economics, but to uphold the principles expressed by Kemi Badenoch at our recent conference that have guided Conservative policy for decades: sound money, prudence, and responsibility.

For modern Conservatives who have spent decades arguing for discipline, restraint and responsibility, to now be tempted by a movement that raises council tax, scraps welfare caps, tears down infrastructure, and spooks the markets is not a return to principle – it is a retreat from it.

Margaret Thatcher’s centenary is not a time for nostalgia, but for renewal. It should inspire us to rebuild the party she led, confident in free markets, serious about spending, and unafraid to tell the truth. The lesson of her leadership is that Conservatism succeeds when it is honest about reality and brave enough to face it. The alternative – the populist delusion that we can spend more, tax less, and still balance the books – always ends in crisis.

Reform’s economics are not conservative. They are a reckless mix of fantasy nostalgia and resentment. Those tempted to follow would do well to look past the slogans and remember what real leadership, the kind that endures beyond the headlines, truly looks like.